


Like a Virus is my Last Hope

by karrenia_rune



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3188825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An episode expansion of the second season episode "Harper 2.0"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Virus is my Last Hope

Fandom: Andromeda, general series  
Title: Like a Virus is My Last Hope  
Author: karrenia  
Character: Harper  
Rating: PG  
Prompt: Table 3, #65 mistake  


Disclaimer: Andromeda and all related characters and events are the property of Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions and do not belong to me. Set during the 1st season episode "Harper 2.0.

 

"Like a Virus is My Last Hope" by Karen

Hardwired and ready to burn Harper put the finishing touches on the data port in his neck.

Accquiring this particular piece of technology had been something he had wanted back when he still been running hot cargo aboard the Eureka Maru with Beka Valentine. Whether or not he would admit to himself or not, having an entire High Guard flagship to tap into.

Okay it was not as good as having a real flesh and blood woman, but it was close.

Tapping directly into the core of the computer AI of the HighGuard ship the Andromeda Ascendant was pretty close. Sure the ship had a brain the size of a planet but never let it be said that would deter Seamus Zelazny Harper.

Entering the realm of the ship's computer core, Seamus sometimes forgot that he was not actually physically present inside, but it the sensation was close as made no difference. The landscape of the Andromeda Ascendant's mind was like nothing he had ever experienced, it was vast and spacious, and filled with endless possibility.

The door to the engineering opened to admit Captain Dylan Hunt and Trance,

"Mr. Harper, come down to the cargo bay, something just invited itself and I don't want  
to take any chances."

"Sure, boss," Harper replied, and carefully yanked out the electronic jack that connected his data port to the computer interface. "Be with you in a jiffy."

Harper was curious about the intruder but Dylan wasn't any more forthcoming with information that was absolutely necessary. Trance being Trance would tell what she knew when she was ready and not before.

To Harper's surprise, the remaining members of the crew were already waiting in the cargo bay, Tyr managing to look confident in the crowded space. Beka just looked annoyed at the delay. "About time you got here," she snapped.

"We're fashionably late," Dylan replied, unperturbed at her irritability.

"It looks like those watermelons you so spectacularly blew up a while back, Harper," Beka remarked.

"Please, don't remind me," Harper replied, recalling his repeated tests to send the fruit into the future within the space of a few minutes. Not one of his better experiments, after all, it had been in pursuit of a more worthy goal, to reunite Dylan with his missing wife, a considerably longer interval involved there than a few minutes, more like 300 years. It had almost worked, but not enough to make the experiment a success.

On Dylan's orders Tyr and Harper drew out knifes and cut into the tough but astonishingly soft sphere, blinded for a few seconds but the wildly darting bright purple and blue lights emitted from the sphere as its exterior was broken into.

Tyr, being a Nietzschean with more refined senses than a human, was the first to notice  
the foul stench that wafted out of the interior. "There is something alive in here, and  
I suspect it may either be dead or injured."

Tyr was right. Harper with Trance moving in to help reached in and together they pulled out the escape pod's passenger. A Perseid, a badly injured one at that.

With some gentle probing by Dylan and Trance, and checking the origin of the pod.

After a while the Perseid's identity was established as a member of the High Guards archives.  
The man was a librarian.

The passenger out to be a rather frantic and not entirely lucid Perseid. 'In the midst of his rambling and incoherent babble, there must be some information we can use,' Trance thought to herself, leaning forward and laying one hand on the unfortunate man's forehead. It was hot to the touch and damp with perspiration. 

The Perseid jerked back from the fleeting contact, sitting on the floor of the cargo bay, back up against the open spherical chamber of his escape pod, rocking back and forth, legs drawn up to chest height. "Poor man," she whispered.

Louder so Dylan and Harper could hear, "There must be something we can do for him.  
I do not believe he's ill, just scared out of his mind."

"If that's true, then the question remains why did he come here and what frightened  
him so? Dylan replied.

"Scared stiff, get it?" Beka quipped. "So scared that you freeze right where you are."

"Not now, Beka," Dylan muttered.

"Ah, boss," we should probably get him to the infirmary," Harper added.  
"He doesn't look he'll be able to answer any questions in the state that he's in."

No sooner than Harper had uttered those words the Perseid's green skin flushed with perspiration his breath coming in short, gasping intervals when he suddenly looked up at Harper. Not seeing him as someone who could help but specifically the data port in Harper's neck.

Reaching up with remarkable strength and determination the Perseid grasped Harper by one his  
sleeves yanked him down and began a massive data transfer into his only  
available option.

Harper at first didn't know how to react, should he pull away, retaliate and then the overload of stimuli began to tell, and he began screaming and could not stop. In the back of his mind, a phrase floated up to the surface. 'You know that you've lost your mind when you laugh and scream at the same time."

The holographic image of the computer's AI personality appeared on a nearby view screen. "Dylan, come up to the command deck, there are urgent communications waiting for from a man calling himself Marshall Yeager. He insists on speaking to you personally."

"Acknowledged," Dylan replied, glancing at where his engineer sat on the floor, clearly in distress." "Mr. Harper, what happened?"

"Way too much information," Harper gasped unaware that his responses and posture at that instant mirrored those of the Perseid librarian who at that very instant breathed his last, a sigh of relief to rid of a burden and he died.

 

While Trance tended to Harper in the infirmary Dylan, Beka and Tyr went up to the Command Deck to answer the communications and a rather peremptory summons to Dylan's way of thinking from this Field Marshall.

"Captain Hunt, greetings, I am Field Marshall Yeager," the well muscled, tall man a scar marking the left side of his broad face, announced the instant his image came up on the view screen.

"Captain Dylan Hunt of the HighGuard Ship the Andromeda Ascendant," he exchanged greetings.

"I shall make this brief and to the point. I am in pursuit of a fugitive, one Perseid librarian who is in illegal possession of a data disc. "

"He's here. I don't know about you, but I believe a man is innocent until proven guilty."

"As do I, Captain. However, I have a warrant for his arrest."

"Well, la de dah," Beka griped. "Excuse me for being the voice of doubt here, but it sounds like you are just some pumped up glorified bounty hunter."

"I would concur," Tyr added. "I suspect a guilty conscience, however, on Captain Valentine's statement, however.'

"You're not helping, Tyr," Dylan muttered. "But getting back to the issue at hand."

"I hate to interrupt this spirited debate, Captain Hunt," Yeager broke into the momentary silence, "But I have a mission as yet unfilled and I want that data disc and the body of the Perseid turned over into my custody."

"Sorry, ain't' gonna happen," Beka replied, folding her arms across her chest.  
a glint in her eye.

"Like she said," Dylan told Yeager, for his part slammed his fist down effectively severing  
the connection.

"That went well," Dylan said, glancing around the Command Deck.

"He took rejection better than I had expected."

After his less than successful conversation with Captain Hunt Field Marshall Yeager hardly insulted by the blond human female, Beka Valentine's comment about his being a glorified bounty hunter, shut down all nonessential systems and sat down in his pilot's chair to rethink his strategy. The playing field had altered slightly.

His target was no longer the Peresied librarian, for he was dead.

The fact that Hunt wanted to have an autopsy performed no longer concerned him for all he was after was the disc. If the Perseid did not have it stood to reason that someone else aboard did. This time he wasn't going to wait for an invitation. He had promised Hunt and his crew that he would be back and he meant to make good on that promise.

His ship was barely big enough to even register as a blip on the target ship's sensors Field Marshall Yeager studied the 8 x 10 hardcopy photo of his assigned target. The human male had wild rather uncontrollable looking ash blond hair, wore equally clashing cargo pants that looked as if they had been thrown in haste during a windstorm and a smug, confident look on his narrow-chined face. 

The eyes were a piercing, intelligent and already Yeager knew he wasn't going to like hauling that smug young human back. Not that it mattered, Yeager told himself, once I retrieve the disc all I have to do kill him and it becomes a moot point."

Harper, against Trance's suggestions left the infirmary for his quarters and tried to get some sleep. Sleep was elusive, he tossed and turned, he tried counting off the proverbial sheep, tried to name all the elements of and their atomic weights. Nothing helped. His brain working way to fast for his body to keep up. 

That was when he realized just what the crazy Perseid had managed to download through the data port and directly into his brain. An entire library of information.

Harper got up and decided he would head over to the machine shop and get some work done if he was going to resign himself to being an insomniac.

**  
Harper let his mind take over and guide his hands, unaware of the time passing by in quicksilver intervals. No sooner had he begun one project that he had moved over to another. He was only peripherally aware of Rev Bem coming by to inquire after his health and he needed any assistance with his various projects. 

Upon receiving a negative the Magog Waysist left, and while Harper tinkered, wired, and pushed and pulled controls, he sang snatches of old Earth songs unaware that none of the languages that he gave voice were ones he had ever heard or learned before.

Harper sat down briefly, taking a brief inventory of the half-finished objects laying around the Machine Shop. "What the hell is wrong with me? I feel like I'm slowly being poisoned by some kind of virus."

"Want a list?" Beka smirked as she came into the room.

"Seriously, Harper, I'm worried about you." Beka added, this time with more concern tinging her voice, "As long as I've known you, let's admit you've always been a bit eccentric. "

"I won't argue with you on that one. I know better." Harper grinned than knuckled his eyes with the back of his hand, his vision was getting bit blurry. Chuffing laughter  
escaped his lips and he sank down on the floor trying to bring everything into focus.

"Granted, but I still think you should let Trance ran another medical scan, for the last few days you have been acting more eccentric than usual if that's possible."

"I'm fine." Harper replied not looking up from the project he held in his hands.

"No you're not. Don't make me pull rank on you."

"Now which one of us is the crazy one?" Harper arched an eyebrow and exchanged a glance with her.

"Don't make jokes, this isn't funny." Beka snapped than combed one hand through her blond hair. "Whatever information is contained in that data disc, I think it's slowly driving you crazy."

"Rommie tells me that you haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in days and the hours that you do, they're hardly what she would call restful. Talk to me."

"Nightmares, Bek, I can't sleep because of the nightmares." Harper whispered.

"Really bad ones. You don't want to know the details."

"When did they start?" Beka asked.

"Soon after that massive download by that Perseid." Harper whispered.

"The one that bounty hunter was after."

"What bounty hunter?" Harper gasped.

"Wait a flaming second, if Yeager was after the Perseid for the data port but he would rather die than give it up, than that means, you have it now!"

"Great, just great, that makes me a target now. Do you think he knows?" Harper said.

"Oh he knows, all right. Yeager stepped around the corner of one the work tables, weapon leveled on the room's occupants.

"Thank you for making my job that much easier." Yeager smiled a rather unpleasant one that made the scar on his left cheek pucker. He moved forward, remarkably fast for such a large man.

Beka whirled around for something to use as a weapon, and settled for the knife in her boot tops, while Harper picked up a large metal rod. Yeager spun around and backhanded Beka in her jaw, the force of the blow sent her staggering backward and she fetched up against the half-completed framework of an old-fashioned flying machine. Stunned but definitely not out of the fight yet.

Harper spun and darted keeping just out of reach of the bigger man's reach, taking swipes at Yeager's midsection hoping to get solid blows in. Going down without a fight just was not Harper's style.

Tyr arrived at that instant, firing off shots from his very big laser guns. Yeager seemed more irritated than hurt and in the blink of an eye simply melted through the floor of the Machine Shop.

"Now I know I'm going crazy. That just isn't possible. There must be a rational logical explanation for what just happened," Harper laughed, a stiff smile creasing his lips. "You got a better explanation then I'm all ears."


End file.
